What to Expect from a Spiritual Healer

Medical paradigms determine how we think about our bodies. Over the years, Western medicine has identified evil spirits, humors, germs and viruses as causes of disease and has designed treatments accordingly. As technologies in medicine advance and as we learn more about our mind-body connections, our medical paradigms are shifting. New paradigms give rise to new possibilities.

[For example,] in the past, the auric field has been known to be associated with health and healing, but in a rather "esoteric" way. Knowledge of the field has been a mixture of real observations, assumptions and fantasies. Now, as we learn more about bioenergy in our laboratories and clinics, the idea of a human energy field that is directly connected to our health is becoming more acceptable within the Western medical paradigm.

The Gift of Healing

The gift of healing rests within everyone. It is not a gift given only to a few. It is your birthright as much as it is mine. Everyone can receive healing, and everyone can learn to heal. Everyone can give healing to themselves and to others.

You already give yourself healing, even though you may not call it that. What is the first thing you do when you hurt yourself? You usually touch the hurt part of your body. You may even grab it to help stop the pain. This physical instinct also sends healing energy to the hurt part. If you relax and keep your hands on the injury longer than you normally would, you will find an even deeper healing taking place. Every mother touches, holds, kisses or caresses her children when they are in pain. She does the same for her other loved ones. If you take these simple reactions and begin to study them, you will find that when you touch someone whom you love very much, there will be a stronger effect than if you are touching someone you don't know. Most likely you have given your touch a special essence -- the essence of the love you have for that person. You see you knew healing all the time but were unaware of it.

When you are joyful, happy, energized, or in any other kind of good mood, your touch will be more pleasant to others than when you are in a bad mood. The energy within a bad mood touch is not the same as that within a joyous one. How you are in any given moment is expressed through your energy. When you learn to regulate your moods and therefore the nature of the your energy and your energy flow, you will soon be using your energy for healing. That is what healers do. They simply learn to perceive and regulate their energy in order to utilize it for healing.

If you are considering going to a healer, it is important to know what is being offered -- and what is not. People have been so used to going to a physician to get rid of a particular ailment that they expect healing work to alleviate pain and cure a specific illness as well. Other patients are disappointed by their first healing experiences because they don't understand what happened. They feel more relaxed and probably better, and they want to know why. To answer this, the healer must bring the patient into a different understanding of health and disease.

A healer's main focus is holistic -- to help patients create health in all area of life. They do this by cleaning and balancing the patient's energy, by working to align his or her intent to heal, and by helping him or her connect to the deeper core of his or her being. Many healers work completely intuitively, allowing their hands to move freely. They offer no explanation of what might be wrong with the patient or what is happening in the healing. That is why it is called faith healing.

Others try to offer explanations that may or may not make any sense at all to the patient. Some have complete systems of knowledge worked out. These systems may be known by other healers, such as the system of acupuncture, while others may have been worked out personally by the healer and be specific only to him or her. They decide what is going on in the patient and how the healing is working. These can be difficult to understand for the patient who isn't trained in the particular system the healer is using.

A patient often first goes to a healer hoping to find relief from pain or a certain symptom or to be cured from a specific disease, maybe to have a tumor taken away. And always the patient receives much more than that. The focus of the healer is not only to eliminate the leg pain or the tumor but to also work with the patient to find and heal the root cause of the original symptom or disease. That will be found on a deeper level of the patient's inner being.

As a professional healer, I have been witness to healings of all kinds. At first some things surprised me. Later, I understood them to be part of the natural process of healing. As the inner corridors to the deeper self open within, the patient's experience of life changes. So does the rest of his or her life.

We've all heard about people who, after experiencing an illness, change professions. They don't do so because the illness required it -- for example, because they couldn't physically drive a truck anymore -- but because they find a different purpose. They desire change. The "simple" healing of an illness can bring about dramatic change. Personal relationships change. Some healings bring about marriages; others bring about dissolution of marriages that don't nurture the partners. In other cases, an illness will be the completion of a whole stage of life. And the patient will change just about everything -- profession, home, geographic location, friends, spouse.

Some healings mend long-term splits among family members. Through the healing experience, people gain a much greater respect and trust for their own inner knowing. Many people refer to this as a rebirth.

If you are considering going to a healer, it is important to know that healers work within a very different context than physicians. The two can be complementary if communication avenues are open and trust is created....

Many patients come to a healer wanting the same services a physician offers. Most of us see disease according to the medical system established in this country. People have been so used to going to a physician to get rid of a particular ailment, they expect healing work to alleviate pain and cure a specific illness as well.

The first thing healers must do when such a patient comes to them is to educate the patient as to what is being offered and what is not. To make this clearer, let's start with the basic structure of an office visit to the doctor, then compare it to what happens when you go to a healer.

1. The doctor checks the patient in an examination room.

2. The doctor orders tests to be done that will help figure out what is wrong.

3. After the examination, patient and doctor meet in another room, "the doctor's office," where the doctor sits behind a desk, to discuss what the doctor might think is wrong. The doctor does what he or she can for the patient until the rest of the tests come back.

4. The patient schedules another appointment for after the tests are completed.

5. In this appointment, the doctor does more examination, gives the results of the tests, and gives a diagnosis. The doctor prescribes a method of treatment based on the diagnosis or orders more tests if the first ones are not conclusive.

6. Treatment is usually some kind of medication or surgery to get rid of the problem.

When patients come to a healer, many times they expect the same six steps to be followed. They want a psychic examination. They ask the healer to take away (apparently magically) their problem, much as pills and surgery take away some physical problems. Many people expect to have a posthealing meeting in which the healer gives a diagnosis and a prognosis of how long it will take "to take it away."

Most healers do not use this six-step structure when working with patients. Usually, there is very little talking, no tests, no diagnosis, no prescribed medications, and many times no explanation of what is about to occur before the healing, what is occurring during it, or what has occurred afterward.

The steps in a healing are very simple.

1. Healers usually begin with a short talk with a patient as to why the patient came. Some healers simply ask the patient to go in, take off their shoes and get on the healing table or simply sit in a chair.

2. The healer works on the patient, either touching or not touching the patient, according to his or her healing techniques. The healer might give some explanation. There may be some discussion during the healing.

3. The healer finishes, tells the patient to rest a few minutes before getting up, and leaves the room.

4. There is very little discussion afterward, and the healer asks the patient to come back at the appropriate time.

Many patients are disappointed by their first healing experience because they don't understand what happened. They feel more relaxed and probably better, and they want to know why. They may have even walked into the office with a whole set of questions, all based on the system of illness...that is accepted in this country.

They may have questions like:

"What disease is this?"

"Do I have a tumor? What kind of tumor?"

"Can you take it away?"

"How many healings will it take?"
"How much will this cost?"

"Is my Fallopian tube blocked and preventing pregnancy? Just open it, please. The doctors say they can't."

After a healing, people say things like:

"Well, I don't really feel much different -- just more relaxed."

"What did you do?"

"Now tell me exactly what you did."

"How long will it last?"

"Is it gone? Will it come back?"
"Shall I come back? How many more times?"

These are all important and valid questions that need to be addressed, but they arise out of the present-day medical and health-care system of this country. To answer them in a meaningful way for the patient, the healer must bring the patient into a different understanding of health and disease.

Whether or not healers are aware of the scientific holographic context and...metaphysics...their main focus is holistic -- to help patients create health in all areas of life. They do this by clearing and balancing the patient's energy, by working to align his or her intent to heal, and by helping him or her connect to the deeper core of his or her being, creative force and core consciousness. They direct healing energies into the patient's energy system. Many healers work completely intuitively, allowing their hands to move freely. They offer no explanation of what might be wrong with the patient or what is happening in the healing. That is why it is called faith healing.

Others try to offer explanations that may not make any sense at all to the patient. Some have complete systems of knowledge worked out. These systems may be known by other healers, such as the system of acupuncture, while others may have been worked out personally by the healer and be specific only to him or her. They describe what is going on in the patient and how the healing is working. For the patient who isn't trained in the particular system the healer is using, these can be difficult to understand.

To educate patients, I first find a common ground of understanding within which to converse. Then I explain as best I can the healing process that is to be initiated by healings. I say that healing will continue to unfold within them and tell them how much it is going to affect their lives....

The Skills of a Healer

...As a healer, I work from a broader view to deal with disease. I agree with physicians that an infection due to a microorganism may occur and that usually a medication will remove it. But from my perspective, the microorganism is not the cause. Healers know that a weakness or imbalance in the patient's physical-energetic system allowed for the microorganism invasion that developed into a disease. The microorganism invasion is also another symptom. The cause must be dealt with from the holistic or holographic point of view before true health can be restored. The healer is more concerned with the underlying balance of energies, intention and consciousness that support health or that become imbalanced and eventually allow for disease.

Healers must have the ability to work with all these aspects of a patient's human makeup. They focus on healing the physical body and seek to heal the patient's emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects as well.

The tools and training of a healer are very different from those of a physician. Although most highly skilled healers probably are capable of accessing information about an illness, perhaps even naming both it and an appropriate medication that would correspond to a physician's diagnosis, that is not their primary concern. Healers regard that information as...not the primary reality and not of prime importance. Indeed, it is quite illegal for them to give such a diagnosis. That right has been reserved for those courageous and dedicated souls who have graduated from medical school and passed the state boards.

As the healing progresses, the healing gets much stronger. More energy is poured through your system, and you will probably go into a very deep state of relaxation, which helps the healing process a great deal. At this time your brain becomes synchronized with the healer's. Both are in strong alpha waves (8 Hz), the healing state....

By diligent practice of many exercises designed to increase the sensitivity of their senses, healers learn to use those senses beyond the normal range of human perception. Many healers can feel, hear and see this energy field as well as intuit other information about it. In addition to sensing the field, the healer also must learn a great deal about how to work with the field to heal through its levels as well as about human anatomy, physiology, psychology, illness and the ethics of healership.

With Higher Sense Perception, healers distinguish the many levels of the human energy field. Since each layer of this energy field also penetrates inside the body, healers also sense the field inside the human body. Well-trained healers also develop the ability to sense the energy field of the whole body, of a single cell, and sometimes even of small particles. With the use of [this perception], healers can access a great deal of information to utilize in the healing process.

Above all, healers' greatest tool is love. All healing is done in the context of love. I believe that love is the connective tissue of the universe. It holds it together. Love can heal anything. Healers not only work from a place of love, they teach patients to love themselves.

The foregoing excerpts are taken from Part I: "An Overview of Healing in Our Time" and Part II: "The Techniques of Healing in Our Time" from the book Light Emerging by Barbara Ann Brennan and are reprinted with permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 1993 by Barbara Ann Brennan, published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Barbara Ann Brennan is a healer, therapist and scientist who has devoted more than twenty years to research and exploration of the human energy field. Following an advanced degree in atmospheric physics from the University of Wisconsin, she worked as a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She trained in bioenergetic and core energetic therapy at the Institute for Psychophysical Synthesis and the Community of the Whole Person in Washington, D.C. She was in the first graduating class of Dr. John Pierrakos' Institute for the New Age, now known at The Institute of Core Energetics in New York City.

Her first book, Hands of Light, is recognized as one of the primary texts for alternative healing in our time. She is the founder and director of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing in East Hampton, Long Island, where she has developed a four-year certification program in healing science. Her workshops, lectures and demonstrations have taken her throughout North America and Europe.

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